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8.18.2011

First responders excluded from 9/11 ceremonyResponder who worked at Ground Zero: 'Totally heartbroken'

NEW YORK — When debris rained from the sky in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, the first responders to the terrorist attack did not turn away. They rushed to the World Trade Center buildings while the world around them crumbled.

Yet now, after all the wreckage has been cleared and the rebuilding has begun, their path is again blocked — not by flying chunks of smoldering rubble, but by space constraints...

...Not allowing them to attend this year — the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks — is an especially galling affront, he said.

Additionally, many of the first responders see the decision, first reported by the New York Daily News, as evidence of the city's attempt to push to the background their untreated ailments in the official narrative of recovery and renewal.

If the responders attend the memorial service, "the promise 'we'll never forget' becomes a blatantly obvious lie — a public display that the government didn't do right by us," says Bonnie Giebfried, a first responder.

"It'll bring up the issue that we're basically walking dead, and that we're not being treated."